Lake Ontario, ON - Clara Meade

My Watermark is Lake Ontario.

My childhood dog’s name was Ryley. He was a Portuguese water dog, which I think which were originally meant for carrying messages between ships but my parents bought him because he was hypo-allergenic. While he was still a puppy, my parents took him to a lake while visiting my father’s parents in Nova Scotia. It was Ryley’s first time seeing any sort of large body of water. So as we were standing on the dock, he must’ve thought that the water below was just a solid surface. He ended up walking right off the dock and into the water. My parents had to of course get him out, but he was always afraid of water after that. Eventually whenever we would take him to a lake of the ocean, he would jump in after us anyways. Although Ryley couldn’t resist going in the water, he would still instantly start to climb on us despite being a 60 pound dog. I remember our siblings and I used to take it as a sort of game, trying to swim away from him before Ryley got to us and dunked us under the water. Even though Ryley was an older dog, I remember my mom taking us to Cherry Beach so that my sister could practice swimming since she was getting more serious about competitive swimming. I remember after a while, Ryley would go in after her and you could see her practicing while Ryley trailed a little bit behind.